When you read a scholarly article, pay the most attention to the top and bottom areas of the document - these tell you the most useful information for your assignment:

• Title & Abstract - summarizes the article, indicating whether it is a good fit to continue reading. If it's not a good fit for your assignment topic, no need to continue reading.
   
• Introduction - tells you helpful background information about the topic and provides context for the study that is being done. Generally contains many useful references to other articles on the topic.
   
• Methods - describes how the study is being conducted. This indicates whether the study is empirical, and shows what type of experimental conditions or data collection is being used.
   
• Results - normally a long middle section of the document, including a large quantity of numbers and tables. This section may be skimmed over, to focus more on the following sections for better understanding.
   
• Discussion & Conclusion - provides the interpretation of what the data tables mean. For example, if the results data show certain numbers across a table, the Discussion section will tell you if Group A performed more positively or negatively than Group B. A take-home message you can write about! 
   
• References - these citations allow you to see the information that the study authors cited, and they help connect academic works together as a conversation about a topic. See how to use Google Scholar to find articles that cited something you already found in our tutorials here!